Wednesday, June 06, 2007

News and Blogs Together, Wednesday, June 6, 2007

A good catch for all generic corrections sentencing policies by Corey Rayburn Yung at Sex Crimes Blog:

But Don Ryce, whose son Jimmy was abducted, raped and murdered in 1995, doubts residency laws can work."I think this gives a false feeling that you have the problem under control," he said. "It's hard work to truly protect your children from these predators, and it takes a lot of different systems and it takes a lot of money. So the temptation is to do something where you pretend, and some political figures pretend, it's going to solve the problem once and for all."

Ingo Keilitz at Made2Measure has a nice post up about “radical transparency” in info and data dissemination as a “judo” move to preempt seekers of bad info trying to undercut a public body and as a means of establishing credibility among those who oversee generally. His blog is oriented toward court management, but his words here and usually apply to corrections departments, sentencing commissions, and any other public agency that finds itself subject to outside scrutiny and questions. If you’re going to be searched anyway, get the material out there first before it can be spun into something worse than it is, and, if the stuff is bad, then show that you’re doing something positive. Not genius ideas, but sometimes basic sense needs to be reiterated.

Following on yesterday’s post on states using old, deserted public buildings for new prisons, PA is apparently taking it one better and using an old, deserted public prison for a new prison. That sparked a discussion about the proper folks going into state prisons that Real Cost of Prisons caught here. For those states considering guidelines as a means of controlling prison populations, here’s a little quote you might want to (re)consider:Pennsylvania's inmate population rose 15 percent between 2000 and 2005, third-fastest behind Florida and North Carolina among the 10 states with the biggest prison populations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

One of the problems I have with trying to figure out the costs of crime and of victimization is the difficulty we have assigning values to qualitative factors, the hoops and proxies we fumble with in doing so, and their easy manipulation to justify reaching whatever conclusion the researcher wants to reach. This comes clear especially in the assigning of dollar values to human life. This article gives a very good analysis of one of the latest efforts and the arguments it’s already raised. [And if that doesn’t give your brain a discomfiting whirl, go the Situationist and think about its latest analysis of the context and problems associated with the justice of “he hit me first.”]

Just what we need. First, flavored meth. Now, powdered alcohol in flavors and stealthing in under laws in the Netherlands. Popular with the young set. How long before it gets here for our teens and younger? What kind of species dreams this stuff up, anyway?

In case anyone wondered, when you create your guidelines for male principals kissing of young male feet after losing a bet, the prescriptive sentence is apparently probation.